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In many African states, decolonisation brought neither prosperity nor meaningful independence. The discontent with weak political and economic sovereignty led African revolutionaries to seek support from Asia, a proximity that continues to endure long after 1989. This paper focuses on decades of diverse forms of political interaction – ideational inspiration, policy emulation, party-to-party cooperation – between several Asian states, such as China, Korea and Viet Nam, and African (neo)liberation movements turned governments, from Eritrea and Ethiopia to Mozambique and Tanzania. Socialist imaginaries, institutions and, above all, technologies of rule have been central in these processes and far more prominent – substantively and rhetorically – than any alternative ideology: the development of the vanguard Party, operated through democratic centralism; the popular defence force, an army loyal to the Party; and state capitalism to control the economy's commanding heights. These enduring ties between African and Asian comrade state-builders, and the quest for heterodox political modernities they represent, have been largely overlooked, especially in the post-Cold War period. They not only shed light on alternative political geographies and transnational histories of Africa and Asia, but also alert us to present-day ideological projects that differ starkly from Western liberal hegemony and its emphasis on Washington Consensus-style economics and representational democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the new scramble for Africa as governments announced an Africa+1 summit meeting. It compares the contemporary narrative around a new scramble with lines of competition and geopolitical rivalry among great powers in the continent. The involvement of foreign armed forces in the fight against terrorism is discussed, as well as the competition among African countries to attract foreign investment.

The article explores the policies of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the dominant regional powers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Topics discussed include the evolution of foreign relations in the region, the power struggles among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and the implications of the rapid deepening of transregional relations for Africa.

How much agency do African states have to shape global orders? This study puts the global nuclear order under scrutiny to answer this question. It amounts to a demanding case. Arms control is something that global great powers take very seriously, and there is no weapons category that they take more seriously than nuclear weapons. My findings provide a nuanced picture. Although often outflanked and frustrated by nuclear weapon states, the nuclear order would look different without African actors exerting their agency. They successfully shaped background and foreground institutions constituting the global nuclear order by building advocacies for new institutions upon already existing ones, reaching out to state and non-state actors outside of Africa, and channelling communication through African states with authority in global fora. This study makes three contributions: First, it underlines the key finding of recent literature on African agency that African actors are more to be reckoned with than often assumed. Second, it provides novel evidence about the diplomatic mechanisms through which they come to make a difference. Third, it adds to our grasp of the constitution of global orders as well as the processes through which they come to be made, re-made and unmade more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the geopolitical consequences of the imminent energy transition from oil to non-carbon and renewable sources of energy for Africa's largest oil producer and exporter Nigeria. It mentions growing use of non-carbon and renewable forms of energy will impact African oil producers negatively, particularly in relation to economic growth; and implications of the geopolitics of oil in Africa. It also mentions about a decrease in prices of oil.

African Renaissance being a call for a re-birth of the African continent, advocates social cohesion, growth, development, promotion of values and ethics, and the establishment of Africa as a significant player in global affairs. The idea of a renaissance is an acknowledgement of a failure, in part or in whole, to realize Pan-Africanism aspirations of total liberation and unity of people of African descent. The Philosophy and movement of Pan- Africanism evoked a consciousness that questioned oppression and colonial domination. Decades after the actualization of self-determination by many African states, a united and advanced Africa remains farfetched. The re-birth of Africa is certainly long overdue. Multiple regional and sub-regional integration initiatives are reflections of attempts to achieve African renaissance and pan-Africanism. The obstacle however lies precisely in the leadership character and steps which undermines transformation. This paper argues from a political systems position that at the core of policy conceptualization, formulation and implementation, lies the human element; political actors and bureaucrats. The character and orientation of leaders, being ethical or unethical, invariable influences or gives colouration to policy outcomes. Therefore, the question of leadership in relation to ethics, character, critical thinking and constructive will sufficiently come to the fore in conversations about African renaissance and pan-Africanism. Ethical leadership invariably constitutes the nexus between Africa's current reality and the actualization of lofty aspirations of African renaissance and pan- Africanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 1963, some three months before sports administrators from around the world were to descend on Nairobi for the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) annual session, the meeting was in jeopardy. Government officials in Kenya announced that in protest against white minority rule on the African continent, delegates from Portugal and South Africa were to be denied entry visas. Their decision culminated in the eleventh-hour transfer of the IOC session from Nairobi, Kenya, to Baden-Baden, West Germany. Kenyan politicians, on the cusp of ousting British colonial control, were using the Nairobi IOC gathering of 1963 to advance the anti-colonial resolutions of the newly established Organization of African Unity (OAU) in solidarity with Africa's independent states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines an apparent contradiction in the normative order and security culture of the African Union (AU). Many scholars and policy-makers alike have recognized a disjuncture between the norm of anti-imperialism, as expressed through the principle of 'African solutions to African problems', and the dependence of the AU on extraregional actors. This article shows that material constraints alone do not explain the AU's behaviour in this regard. Rather, I argue that what appears to be a contradiction in the normative order of the AU is actually a particular practice—a pragmatic and rather automatic cognitive and behavioural trait of AU officials and one that unfolds in the daily operation of the AU. It is a practice wherein AU officials uphold both the anti-imperialist norm and their pragmatic dependence as mutually congruent. This article explores this apparent contradiction, documenting its origins and illustrating its operation in practice. To do so, it provides an account of AU practices from within the AU itself, conceptualizing the AU as a community of practice, and draws on 21 interviews with member state officials from the AU and its wider African Peace and Security Architecture, as well as with European and North American diplomatic officials working alongside the AU in Addis Ababa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the proposed Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), which refers to a collaborative vision shared by India and Japan to create a growth corridor and industrial network connecting Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa across the Indo-Pacific region. Topics discussed include the policy motivation for AACG, the possibility of the AAGC's final materialization, and the impact of AACG on China's Belt and Road Initiative.

This paper attempts to assess the civilian character of Turkey's political economy in sub-Saharan Africa with a special focus on its trade policy towards African countries. It also seeks to explore the degree to which its trade policies towards the continent contribute to the construction of a civilian foreign policy. Additionally, this study delves into the linkages between "power and trade" and between "civilian power and trade". Assuming that Turkey is not usually conceived as a traditional civilian power in the IR literature and political debates, this paper aims to fill the lacuna in the existing literature focusing on the impact of trade on the making of civilian power. Applying Maull's threefaceted framework of civilian power characteristics (cooperation, use of economic means, development of supranational structures), this study concludes that in Turkey's emerging "civilian power" objectives, trade's role is larger in the use of economic means for securing national goals and cooperation in the pursuit of international objectives than in the development of supranational structures for international management level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the Lomé Convention (1975) was signed between the European Economic Community (EEC) and 46 African Caribbean and Pacific States, the EEC member states had to deal with the African members of the Commonwealth. Among the Six France was in a peculiar position, wishing to maintain a special relationship between the EEC and the French-speaking African states and to enlarge its relations with other regions of the Third World. This article, based on an examination of the French Foreign Ministry Archives and the Papiers Foccart, aims to investigate the prehistory of the relations between the EEC and the English-speaking African states. It analyses the French role in the debate, outcomes and consequences of the first agreements signed by the European Community with Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. To this aim it will focus on the negotiations between the EEC and the African states, but also on the debate which took place in some international organisations on the Yaoundé Convention, in order to understand to what extent these discussions paved the way for the evolution of the EEC Development Policy during the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the economic effects of corporatization processes in Africa through an analysis of the intervention of French media companies in the economy of Nigerian video film distribution in Frenchspeaking West Africa, and particularly in Côte d'Ivoire. In a global context that is marked by the price volatility of raw materials such as oil and copper, screen media have been described as the new 'African black gold', attracting the interest of a large number of both African and non-African players and setting in motion a process of the 'corporate takeover' of African screen media industries. Analysing this process can help us to understand wider economic transformations in Africa. This article examines what we might call the 'technopolitics' of Nigerian video films' circulation and their historical transformations by examining the microdimension of the experiences of a number of West African video film producers and distributors, and the macro-dimension of the activities of a French corporation, CanalPlus, which is investing in Nollywood's distribution. It argues that Nollywood has acquired a strategic function for French enterprises that are investing in Africa, as evidenced by the transformation of Côte d'Ivoire's role in the economy of Nigerian video films' transnational circulation. This suggests a new and transformed dimension to France's economic and political relationships with sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a more nuanced assessment of the politics of African neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Summary This paper investigates whether World Bank conditionality is affected by the presence of “new” donors by using panel data for 54 African countries over the 1980–2013 period. Empirical results indicate that the World Bank delivers loans with significantly fewer conditions to recipient countries which are assisted by China. In fact these receive 15% fewer conditions for every percentage-point increase in Chinese aid. Less stringent conditionality is also observed in better off borrowers that are in addition funded by Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, but this effect vanishes after the start of the new millennium. In contrast, World Bank conditionality is rarely affected by aid inflows from DAC donors, and when it is, conditionality is revised upward. These findings suggest that new donors might be perceived as an attractive financial option to which the World Bank reacts by offering credits less restrictively in order to remain competitive in the loan-giving market and thereby cope with excesses in the supply of development resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Israel's international relations with Africa from a thematic point of view. It first provides a historical background of the relations from the 1950s onwards and focuses on how they developed and the keenness by Israeli leaders to forge such relations, develop them and nurture them to use them in international forums as stated by Golda Meir in her autobiography. The article then focuses on the last visit of Israeli Netanyahu to east Africa in July 2016 when he toured four countries - Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda - in a bid to “culture” the already existing relations between Israel and these states. The article highlights the view given by Netanyahu towards Africa as a policy theme and the fact the trip had much Israeli businessmen who accompanied him in a bid to generate business and economic relations with each of the countries and the domestic criticism it generated in Israel, most notably from the leader of the Labor Party Issac Herzog who was scathing in his attack on the Likud leader. The visit is then contextualized within Israel's international relations which includes her bid to pressure through such countries as Ethiopia, to be granted an “observer status” in the African Union and the continuing unwillingness against that from South Africa. The final section of the article is on how Israel is having more influence in the United Nations and how also using its relations, through some African countries, to gain influence in the UN and presently lobbying for a non-permanent seat at the Security Council in the coming years and which it is surely going to get because of the continuing support its getting from many states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of bipartisanship in Australian foreign policy is not often substantially addressed. The country's relations with the world appear to exhibit strong continuity regardless of the political party in government. And yet, when it comes to engagement with African states and issues, the last two decades have seen highly prominent partisan differences in Australian foreign policy. This article utilises the example of Australia's foreign policy engagement with Africa to argue that there may be two levels of understanding bipartisanship in Australian foreign policy. On the one hand, aimed at relationships and issues perceived to be of primal and significant security and economic well-being for the country, Australian foreign policy does indeed appear to be bipartisan. However, aimed at relationships and issues that have traditionally been perceived as holding minimal security and economic interest and importance for the country, Australian foreign policy does exhibit partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stronger government-to-government relations between Africa and China in the first two decades of the twenty-first century have led to an increasing presence of African travellers at Chinese border check points. This is a novel situation involving cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication dynamics that we need to understand from different research perspectives: linguistic, socio-economic, and legal, among others. Academic studies are already detailing some misunderstandings between Chinese customs, immigration and public security officials and African travellers and immigrants, who are clearly a visible minority group, both at border check points and in the wider Chinese communities (; ; ). A number of questions may be asked towards understanding the cross-cultural dynamics involved in this novel situation. What are Chinese immigration and customs officials' experiences with African travellers and how do they see and handle this visible minority ethnic group? What are, in turn, African experiences with Chinese immigration, customs, and public security, officials both at border check points and in the wider Chinese communities in places like mainland China and Hong Kong? To answer these questions, a profile of the most frequent African visitors to Hong Kong and China is constructed, based on research among Africans in China, particularly Guangzhou. An outline is then made of what Africans think of Chinese customs and immigration officials as a whole, what kind of treatment they expect on arrival in China and how they prepare for it. It is then claimed that the most fundamental issue that causes friction, unhappiness and sometimes lack of cooperation from African travellers at immigration and customs check points in Hong Kong and other places in China is not so much due to linguistic and cultural misunderstanding as it is due to stereotyping and, in extreme cases, (un)conscious racial profiling. Finally, it is proposed that the best way for Hong Kong and other Chinese customs personnel to serve African immigrants is to apply immigration rules using systematically fair, just and colour-blind strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa has traditionally been marginal to the Australian foreign policy agenda, aside from British colonial and Commonwealth ties and later efforts to end minority rule in southern Africa. Yet a resources boom, strong economic growth, increasing democratisation and reformed governance institutions have created new international interests in engaging with Africa and made it difficult for aspiring global players like Australia to ignore the continent's opportunities and challenges. Under Labor (2007-13), Canberra pursued substantial 'new engagement' with this 'new Africa', enhancing political and diplomatic relations, supporting major Australian commercial interests and quadrupling the Africa aid budget. Following the election of the Abbott Coalition government in September 2013, the article argues that while commercial opportunities and some specific security and humanitarian concerns will keep the Coalition interested in Africa, the enhanced level of engagement with the continent pursued under Labor is unlikely to be sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violent conflict escalated in Africa in 2014, with five sub-Saharan states – the Central African Republic (CAR), Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan – accounting for an estimated 75% of all conflict-related deaths on the continent. This paper provides an overview of the five major sub-Saharan African conflicts in 2014 and considers the underlying causes and dynamics in the Seleka/anti-Balaka conflict in the CAR, the Islamist threats of Boko Haram and al-Shabaab in Nigeria and Somalia, the civil war in South Sudan, and the long-running conflict between Sudan's government and southern and Darfuri rebels. The paper unpacks the general trends evident in these conflicts and the implications for the settlement thereof, including the targeting of civilians, ethnic and religious mobilisation and the state as epicentre of violence. The paper concludes with a brief look ahead to 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

African states today are strongly encouraged by the United States (US) and other members of the international community to play a more central role in confronting crises on the continent. Indeed, in recent years African armed forces have increasingly served as the backbone supporting various peacekeeping operations in the region. It is important to add that the international community has frequently tried to facilitate the deployment of African armed forces with aid and training. From this reality, the following study goes beyond the current literature by focusing on the international factors behind African participation in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations in Africa. In doing so, this research focuses on US military aid and foreign troop training from 2002 to 2012, and its impact on African deployments into UN peacekeeping missions in Africa. As can be expected, such third-party help appears to be an important motivating factor encouraging African troop deployment into crises on the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In their respective struggles for liberation the Asians and Africans, as oppressed people, joined forces in the first half of the 20th century by forming several pre-Bandung organizations. On the African side people of African descent, from the continent and the Diaspora, united to provide the leadership for substantive participation to the common African-Asian front that led to the Bandung conference of April 18-24 1955. The intelligentsia of African descent, including young students in Western Europe and the United States, played leadership roles in shaping the movements. Among them are W. E. B. Du Bois of the United States and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. In terms of the post-Bandung establishment of enduring legacies, it is worth indicating that the resolutions and some of their applications led to global coalitions including the Non-Aligned Movement and G77 within the United Nations. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary that was marked by the April 22-24 2005 Asian-African Summit held in Indonesia African and Asian leaders decided to rekindle the spirit of Bandung and renew their commitment to attain its goal through renewed cooperation between Asia and Africa in adopting the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP). Despite the continued challenges that African countries face in varying degrees, a regained confidence building on their assets, especially with different generations of people of the continent and historic and recent Diaspora, with it would be possible to build a global front toward the reaffirmation of global common humanity guided by the spirit of Bandung. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Chinese response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, first surveying Chinese interests in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Many Chinese workers have been evacuated and projects postponed. For the first time, China has extended humanitarian aid to countries facing a public health emergency. China is under pressure to ‘do something’ but faces its own developmental challenges as well as problems of logistics. Chinese knowledge of Africa is still relatively weak and uninformed. Although China’s assistance dwarves that from the other BRICS, the Ebola crisis has revealed problems in Sino-African relations, not least the gap between rhetoric and reality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Debate on the 'securitization' of aid and international development since 9/11 has been anchored in two key claims: that the phenomenon has been driven and imposed by western governments and that this is wholly unwelcome and deleterious for those in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. This article challenges both of these assumptions by demonstrating how a range of African regimes have not only benefited from this dispensation but have also actively encouraged and shaped it, even incorporating it into their own militarized state-building projects. Drawing on the cases of Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda-four semi-authoritarian polities which have been sustained by the securitization trend-we argue that these developments have not been an accidental by-product of the global 'war on terror'. Instead, we contend, they have been the result of a deliberate set of choices and policy decisions by these African governments as part of a broader 'illiberal state-building' agenda. In delineating this argument we outline four major strategies employed by these regimes in this regard: 'playing the proxy'; simultaneous 'socialization' of development policy and 'privatization' of security affairs; making donors complicit in de facto regional security arrangements; and constructing regime 'enemies' as broader, international threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the scarcity of comparative academic literature, there exists a close relationship between Cuba and the Western Sahara. This connection was carved during the Cold War, by means of the assistance, respect and shared position offered in the face of social emancipation processes. This article reflects on the implications of the mobility and migratory control policies of these two experiences that, despite their geographic separation and distinct histories, developed political projects based on the construction of egalitarian societies under the socialist ideology. The established migration discourses and regulations in the two cases show clear connections between both political projects and their steadfastness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of French Africa policy have traditionally focused on its neo-colonial basis and the often corrupt nature of the relations it engendered because of the connivances of semi-official and unofficial networks and covert practices that characterised it. These are often referred to in the literature as la Françafrique. In seeking to understand François Hollande's Africa policy this article moves away from a neo-colonial, Françafrique analytical framework and instead seeks to engage with the continuity versus change debate in French Africa policy through the lens of geopolitics. The three central themes of Hollande's Africa policy—security, partnership and trade—are analysed, focusing firstly on the French interventions in Africa, notably in Mali, since 2012, before discussing French engagement with African regional organisations, such as the Economic Community of West African States, and the increasing importance attached to economic and trade links. The article ends with a brief survey of some of the challenges facing French Africa policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's foreign policy in Africa has achieved more than what initially has been planned as Opening to Africa in the last decade. A new post-2014 vision for Africa is necessity for variety of reasons including the tiredness among some segments of society and some state institutions. his article outlines the challenges fort his vision and put forward some ideas for the future of Turkey-Africa relations. he underlying point is that time has come for partnership with other actor in Africa to deepen further the relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important political consequence of the crisis of capital in the 1970s has been an increasing intensification of informal imperialism within Africa. This paper argues that the advanced capitalist countries again confronted the endemic problem of overcapacity alongside a decline in the rate of profit and that the major neoliberal reforms foisted upon the African continent were part of the spatio-temporal fix that followed. The quotidian management of many African states was not an intended consequence of structural adjustment, but the subsequent perturbations that beset many developing countries after following such policies has led to such a degree of institutional instability that a new form of imperial governance has come into being. Juridical sovereignty has been maintained, but political sovereignty has been severely compromised through the emergence of this neo-imperial governance. Today an array of external actors is embedded in the sinews of these states, setting the general parameters of state policy to such an extent that one can no longer speak of these countries as possessingde factoindependence. The rise of these so-called ‘governance states’ and the new emphasis on ‘governance with government’ constitute a new non-territorial, political form of imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the state of relations between Brazil and Africa during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from 2003 to 2010. Topics discussed include a description of power configurations during the post-Cold War period and a background of race, culture and diplomacy before da Silva won the presidency in 2002. Also discussed are the reaons for the successful overtures of da Silva to Africa.

The article outlines geographically several important world affairs that transpired in 2014. Topics discussed include the crisis in Ukraine resulting from Moscow, Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in March 2014, France's growing role in Africa, and the international mismanagement of Syria's three-year-long civil war.

Canadians tend to perceive Canada's historic engagement and influence in Africa in ways very much disconnected from reality. Canada's self-image as a humane internationalist country deeply engaged with Africa relies on an idealized version of history. Nevertheless, there have been times when the reality of Canadian foreign policy engagement with Africa has been much closer to that ideal than it is now. This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on Canada-Africa relations by building greater understanding of Canada's position in Africa. It tackles the question of Canada's engagement with Africa by analyzing three broad aspects of a possible relationship between a developed country and developing region: the economic, developmental, and trans-societal. Analysis of these three areas of interaction provides insight into what could be done to renew or reinvigorate Canada's engagement with Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role and impact of foreign policy and diplomacy in India–East Africa relations. The main argument of the article is that underlying the ‘soft’ diplomatic strategy employed by both parties are the ‘hard’ core security, economic and power interests that are the driving force for East Africa–India engagement in this rapidly globalising and competitive world of the twenty-first century. The article thus underscores that underneath the veneer of an assorted mix of inter-related diplomatic approaches employed to advance respective national interests, the engagement has been pragmatic; business-led rather than ideological; driven mainly by security, economic and power imperatives and less by official rhetoric of South–South political solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

African leaders recognize that setting the post-2015 development agenda is an essential opportunity to influence global policy. Priorities identified during this process will inform internal and external development policies for the next fifteen years and beyond. Although pan-African institutions and individual African states are stepping up to that challenge, a convoluted drafting process may obfuscate the unified, yet fragile, position they have generated. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of Turkey's recently increased engagement in Africa in terms of the potential, limits and future perspectives of relations. It aims to examine Turkey's foreign policy toward Africa and to analyze the driving force behind this foreign policy between 2001 and 2010. The maidens of Turkish Foreign Policy towards African countries have been analyzed as official initiatives and supplementary efforts that demonstrate significant dynamism of Turkish Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The evidences show that Turkish foreign policy has been managed consistently; and as a result of this, improvements on relations are clearly recorded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This publication presents political, social and cultural news and developments on African countries for March 1 to 31, 2014. Topics discussed include Cameroon's re-imposition of security in an area where the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram operates, the agreement of Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) leaders to deploy troops to South Sudan to enforce a ceasefire between government and rebels and diplomatic friction between South Africa and Rwanda.

This paper aims to conceptualize a framework for better understanding the challenges, actions and rationales of the African and Asian small powers in the post-1989 global order. The paper will be divided into three parts. First, it will review the literature on small power/state studies. Second, following a critique of the major approaches in small power studies, we will argue for the need for a critical realist perspective to better capture the relationships between domestic politics and foreign relations of the small power in Africa and Asia. Third, against the comparative trajectories in which the U.S. has attained global hegemony after 1991 and China has gradually become a great power after 2000, in light of the recent U.S. containment policy shift towards China which has stirred up versatile dynamics of East Asian small power politics, in favor of a global multi-polarity, we will highlight the foundation of our approach for building the strong small powers in terms of two main aspects of economic nationalism: resource-focused and sovereignty-asserting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standing on the cusp of a global transition from a Western-dominated world to one experiencing the effects of the "economic renaissance of East Asia," as Giovanni Arrighi calls it, Ngũgĩ's wa Thiong'o's 2006 novel Wizard of the Crow reiterates the author's well-known critique of neocolonialism but also, perhaps more importantly, registers the growing presence of Asia in Africa and offers a thought-provoking consideration of the meaning of that presence in an era of global capital. Though commonly identified as a "dictator novel," Wizard is only partly about "The Ruler" of the fictional African nation of Aburĩria. Through the titular character, Ngũgĩ develops a narrative that explores the opportunities and dangers of embracing the paths of modernization marked out by the advancing economic powers of East Asia. This paper analyzes that narrative, focusing in particular on the thematic and formal elements that reflect and are relevant to China's all-important ambitions in Africa and its core policy of offering aid "without political conditions." These issues ultimately involve the novel in contemporary debates specific to the China-in-Africa phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]